DERF Happy Hour

The Zoo would be even better if it had animals that resemble me

Being a highly respected, world renowned columnist has many advantages, and this week I decided to take advantage of one of them. As you can imagine, celebrities like me get special treatment wherever we go, and that certainly includes the zoo. After simply dropping my own name a few times, and showing the gate attendant my Kroger Plus card, I was given a two dollar discount on zoo admission.

The zoo is a lovely place to spend the day, but it was especially lovely on the days I visit. Maybe it was the nice weather, maybe it was the many baby animals on display, but probably it was the electricity in the air that came from my presence.

Even as a child, my magnetism caused even the animals to take notice. I remember my classmates being impressed by my ability to make monkey noises, and even more impressed by how the monkeys responded to me with monkey noises of their own. Our teacher told me to stop and claimed that the monkeys would be noisy whether I prompted them or not. Of course this was just the teacher’s way of trying to get the focus of the kids back on her.

Now as an adult I can still see the effect I have on the zoo when I visit. I visited the reptiles and thought about what it would be like to be an alligator. I’d probably spend my day laying in the water with the other gators, who would all gather around to listen to my gator wisdom. I would also hope that I would be more colorful than the other alligators, as I don’t look good in grey. This might make it more difficult for me to catch prey but the other gators would probably share their food with me in exchange for my enjoyable company.

I also often ponder how life would be as a Slade version of several other animals. I would make an awesome Slade-effant, a King Slade-bra, or a gorgeous strutting Slade-cock. However, it would be difficult if not impossible to write my column if I didn’t have my superior human mind and ability to type.

So, I’m quite content being human. Although it would probably set attendance records, I don’t think anyone is going to cage this beast and put him on display at the zoo. That would take a pretty handsome sum of money to get me to leave the wilds of Oakley to have people come gawk at me in a habitat that resembled my apartment. They would probably snap pictures of me as I brushed my teeth, watched the Lifetime Channel, read from my extensive library, and ate Hot Pockets. But until I see at least a four figure offer, this wild animal is going to stay in his natural Oakley habitat.

At the end of the day, I said farewell to the zoo, making a final stop to hoot at the monkeys. They seemed especially rambunctious, perhaps they remembered me from junior high school. One of them seemed to like me so much he threw me a present that he had been squatting over. It turned out to be some sort of brown clay that he had somehow shaped into a sculpture of my head. The likeness was remarkable. Until I move in, that monkey is certainly the smartest animal in the zoo.